Stop the map mischief

How to create real competition in politics

November 21, 2012

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn delivers his State of the State address to the General Assembly at the State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois on Wednesday, February 1, 2012. (Chris Sweda)

Ohio, the mother of all tossup states, gave its 18 electoral votes — and with them, the White House — to Barack Obama on Nov. 6. Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown won re-election. Yet Republicans won 12 of Ohio's 16 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Obama won by five points in Pennsylvania, where Democrats also swept four statewide races. But Republicans took 13 of the state's 18 U.S. House seats.

Democrats who had hoped to reclaim a majority in the House came up way short, even with a winner at the top of the ticket and even though their candidates, cumulatively, outpolled Republicans by more than half a million votes nationwide. Why? Because the Republican wave of 2010 gave the GOP control of dozens of state legislatures, just in time for redistricting. Republicans held the House because Republicans drew the maps, carefully sorting voters into districts designed to disadvantage Democrats.

The shoe's on the other foot in Illinois, where Democrats who control the General Assembly rigged the congressional map to erase Republicans' 2010 gains. Illinois voters sent 11 Republicans and eight Democrats to Washington in that election. The new map was designed to elect 12 Democrats and six Republicans in 2012, and that's exactly what happened. (The state lost one seat because its share of the population shrank relative to other states.)

Illinois was one of the few states where Democrats had the opportunity to turn red districts blue, and they went all out. They blew off the rules about drawing compact, contiguous districts that respect geographic and community boundaries. Some Chicago-based districts snake far into the suburbs to dilute the Republican vote. Some were drawn to force Republican incumbents to move or to compete against each other. Seven-term GOP Rep. Judy Biggert's district was busted into six pieces, and her Hinsdale home was spliced into a safe Democratic district held by Rep. Michael Quigley, who lives a few blocks from Wrigley Field.

A panel of federal judges called the map "a blatant political move to increase the number of Democratic congressional seats," then upheld it anyway because hey, redistricting is an inherently partisan exercise. How far is too far? Not even the U.S. Supreme Court will say.

Good citizens, that is the wrong question. We should be asking why we let the politicians draw the lines in the first place. It's often said that our current system allows lawmakers to pick their constituents instead of the other way around, and last week's election put an exclamation point on that sentence.

In Illinois and most other states, redistricting isn't about ensuring fair representation. It's about sticking it to the other party. And it works.

So what's a better way?

Two years ago, the League of Women Voters of Illinois and other government watchdog groups proposed a constitutional amendment that would have turned over the redistricting process to a nine-member commission. Eight of those members — four from each party — would be appointed by legislative leaders, and together they'd choose a ninth to serve as chair. If the panel couldn't agree on a map, a special master appointed by the state Supreme Court would finish the job.

The amendment was blocked by lawmakers who like the current system just fine, thankyouverymuch. A petition drive to put the measure on the ballot anyway came up short.

But reformers have made progress elsewhere.

Two years ago, Californians voted to assign the maps to an independent commission. The state also has a new "top two" primary system, under which the two candidates who get the most votes in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.

The result? Last week's election featured five Democrat vs. Democrat contests and two Republican vs. Republican races. Four candidates ran as "no party preference," and one of them got 46 percent of the vote against a veteran Democrat.

A few races were so close the results still aren't official. But here's what it looks like: More than one in four seats changed parties. Fourteen House freshmen were elected. Seven incumbents, including hard-liners from both ends of the political spectrum, were unseated. In the last decade, only one incumbent congressman had been defeated.

So the new districts are clearly competitive. The lawmakers who were elected will have to work hard to keep their jobs.

That's hardly the case in Illinois. Yes, a lot of seats changed hands here. But it was the politicians, not the voters, who did the picking. Most of the incumbents will have nice safe seats for years to come, which means they can take voters for granted. And they will, if we let them. That's why Illinois reformers need to redouble their efforts to put the maps into the hands of voters.